“You have a point.”
They talked about coffee, travel, and nibbled on a weak breakfast. “So why are we in Rome?” Val finally asked.
Michael lifted his hand in the air, wagged two fingers in Val’s direction, and opened his mouth. “I don’t know if you want to hear this.”
Val felt the smile on his face slip. “Why wouldn’t I want to hear it?”
From behind him, Val heard Margaret’s voice. “Because we’re chasing a lead on your future brother-in-law.”
Val wasn’t sure what was worse . . . the fact that Michael and Margaret were in Rome . . . in Italy . . . following up on Alonzo, or the fact that Val didn’t feel the hair on his neck rise. “Why?”
Margaret and Michael exchanged glances.
“It’s the wine,” Michael told him. “Something about his wine isn’t adding up.”
Margaret stood aside, apprehensive about his reaction, if Val was reading her right. The woman he’d just made love to, had loved thoroughly, was nervous.
He waved her over and patted his leg with a smile.
She moved into his space and took his offered spot. Her skin was soap clean, her hair smelled like roses. There wasn’t a lick of makeup on her face and she was beautiful. Nervous, but beautiful.
She sipped coffee from his cup and refilled it while Michael talked.
Alonzo’s wine tasted familiar, according to Michael. Too familiar, like maybe the wine wasn’t made in the region of Italy that Alonzo claimed it to be. When Michael told Val about his time spent with a man who knew wine better than Val knew the business of vacation resorts and meddling Italian mamas, Val found himself questioning why Michael and Margaret flew all the way to Italy on a lead.
“It’s all we have,” Margaret said as she offered him a buttered biscuit.
“Alonzo’s wine tastes like the same brand you’re familiar with so you fly overseas to look into it?”
There was another look passed between Michael and Margaret.
“I don’t like him,” Margaret blurted out. “I don’t think he’s the right man for your sister. And I think he’s hiding something.”
“He’s hiding something because you don’t like him?”
Margaret moved from Val’s lap and walked to the drapes closing off the view of Rome. She opened them and ambient light flooded the room. “I don’t like him, so I looked into him.”
That caused Val to pause. “Looked into him?”
With her back to him . . . a back clothed in slacks and a silk shirt, her feet still bare . . . sexy. “He spends more money than he makes,” she told him.
Val realized his finger was tapping against the table. He knew Alonzo lived with extravagance. He took the man’s lifestyle into account when he accepted his desire to marry his sister. Gabi deserved a man who could provide for her.
She also deserved her privacy, and that was something that kept Val from doing a complete background check on her fiancé. His eye started to twitch. “How do you know this?”
“Because I’ve been checking up on him.” Margaret turned, leveled her calm gaze Val’s way. “The man is hiding something, Masini . . . and we’re here to find out what that is.”
He gripped the coffee cup tight before setting it down. “Even if he is, what does this have to do with pictures . . . with the two of you?”
Margaret shrugged. “It might have nothing to do with us. Or the man knows we’re on to him and he wants leverage to keep us quiet. Hence, the pictures.”
“Alonzo wasn’t on the island when the pictures were taken.” Yet even as the words left his mouth, Val remembered one of Alonzo’s shipmates had been. His future brother-in-law, and his crew, didn’t go through the rigorous scrutiny that all Val’s employees and guests did.
“If we’re wrong . . . we leave Italy with a full belly and a case or two of wine. But if we’re right . . .” Michael glanced at Margaret.
“We prevent a friend from making a huge mistake.”
“You mean Gabi.” Val found his smile once again. The fact that Margaret would work hard to make sure his sister wasn’t jumping for the wrong man left him pleasantly warm.
“Gabi is too trusting, gullible. Either Alonzo is crazy amazing in bed, or she’s—”
“I don’t want to hear of my sister’s sex life,” Val interrupted.
Margaret moved toward him, sat back on his lap, and kissed him soundly. “Let’s make sure your sister isn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.”
Val wove his hands around Margaret’s waist, loved the feel and scent of her. “And if Alonzo is legit and we’re here searching for his faults?”
“How will they know? Aren’t they out messing around on his—”
His back teeth ground together. “Again with my sister’s love life.”
Margaret took mercy. “She won’t know . . . unless we find something. And even if she finds out, I can take the fall. You followed me and had no choice but to follow along. Or you can go home and have nothing to do with this.”
“And leave you in Italy without knowledge of the language? What do you expect to find out when you can’t tell if someone is telling you the truth or calling you a stupid tourist?”
Michael waved in their direction. “He has a point. You can pretend a lack of knowledge of the language and we can play tourists.”
“And when the time is right, you can ask all the right questions to the locals. It’s worth a shot. Worse case—”